Quiet is not the same as shy, and Liana is proof of it. Slim and 167 cm, she keeps the long, straight chestnut brown hair tucked behind one ear while she listens. Her eyes are brown; they register everything and remark on very little. Her style is classic and romantic: a cream silk blouse, a narrow skirt, a camel coat, pearls that belonged to someone before her. She moves with a dancer's economy, the result of years of pilates.
Graceful and gentle, she is also unusually intuitive. She tends to know when a guest needs to talk and when he would rather listen, and she adjusts without being asked. Conversation is in English, soft and precise. Her shelves are full of French novels in translation, Colette and Flaubert above all. At weekends she gardens, mostly herbs and roses in pots, and speaks about them as though they were difficult friends.
Her Bermondsey evening is a dinner at Casse-Croûte, the tiny bistro on Bermondsey Street with a chalkboard menu and only a handful of tables. The room is loud in a friendly way and the cooking is simple and very good. She likes the corner by the window, and she orders whatever the chalkboard recommends, which she has never once regretted. Afterwards Bermondsey Street is lit and relaxed, the galleries shut, the wine bars still busy, and London Bridge is a short stroll north.
Liana lives in Marylebone and likes a day's notice for calm weeknights. A table for a Bermondsey evening is arranged through booking, with the ladder of lengths on the rates page.